Vatican Guided Tours

You can use the bypass door with either tour.

The benefit of the first tour is that you can remain inside the museums after the tour to visit any rooms not covered by the tour. You can then use the bypass door into the basilica.

If you book the tour with the basilica then you cannot re-enter the museums.

Donna

Thanks for your reply. I'm still curious about a couple of things, though. First, are there any parts of the museum not covered by the tour that are really worth staying for? I know that is going to be a matter of opinion, but it looked like the tour covered all of Rick Steves' must sees from the guide book except, possibly, the Pinocoteca. Though, I could see that even if there were no additional areas in the museum you'd like to visit, it would be nice to be able to linger a bit longer with some of what you've seen. Second, how are you identified individually (I mean, apart from your larger tour group if you stay in the museum a while longer) as eligible for the "tour door"? Are you given some sort of a badge or something like that? And, finally, for anyone who has done the Basilica part of the tour, is it worth not being able to linger in the museum to hear? Would you recommend the Basilica part of the tour just for its own sake?

Only you can decide if staying in the museums and visiting other rooms are worth it to you. There are many many rooms in the museums not covered on the tour. You can visit the Vatican website to see a list of rooms to figure out which are on the tour and which are not and that you wish to see. Rick Steves has a list of HIS must sees, that doesn't mean they should be yours. Do the research and see what the museums have to offer. There are many things not on the tour that I find very interesting and go out of my way to see. The Egyptian rooms are one of them.

You will get a ticket when you check in for the tour and also your confirmation email (which you need to print and take with you) will show that you are on a tour and allowed to use the bypass door. Just show it to the guards.

There is a free tour of the basilica offered every day. I believe it starts at 2pm. Just go to the information booth at the basilica to get on the tour.

Donna

Thanks for you very helpful reply, Donna. I'll have a closer look at the rooms the tour doesn't cover. Surprised to hear it doesn't cover the Egyptian room.

By the way, does anyone know of a website that gives a pretty good account of the contents of the Vatican Museum. All I've been able to find on the Vatican's website is a circle listing all of the various sections of the museum by name around a circle, but no real description of what each section concerns.

Try this?

http://www.vaticanstate.va/content/vaticanstate/en/monumenti/musei-vaticani.html

You're talking about this:

http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/z-Info/MV_Info_Settori.html

Actually, if you click on some of the photos around the circle it will pull up another page with a list of the rooms in that section. You can then click on the rooms for a complete description of what's in that room. They do this for the pinacoteca, gregorian/egyptian museum, sistine chapel, raphael rooms, ethnological museum, classical antiquities musuem and gregorian etruscan museum. You just need to click through.
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Donna

Kathy and Donna, thanks for the helpful replies. I've been trying to click on the pictures on my ipad. I'll try on my laptop and see if that helps.

Yep, that was it. The limitations of the ipad. By the way, I went ahead and reserved just the tour of the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel so we can linger there after the tour.